The Balance
by Xerios
Summary: Movie AU What would have happened to history if the Russians had actually succeeded in their mission to steal the 'Iceman' from Sector Seven back in 1969?
1. Prologue : Bubble

**Disclaimer : **I do not own Transformers or Hasbro. I wish I did, but I don't. The sole OC that appears in this story owns herself and any alternate forms of herself that may or may not appear in other stories. It's a complicated thing, copyright business.

**Note :** This is a movie prequel story dealing with pocket dimensions and alternate histories. This is mainly the result of much speculation over the events that occur in the prequel novel, Ghosts of Yesterday, most specifically the events of the Russian attempt to seize control of the stasis-locked Megatron. In the book, they failed and life moved on into the events of the prequel comic and the movie. But what would have happened if the Russians had succeeded? That's what this story is about. I would also like to point out that this will have no link what-so-ever to my other fic, 'Dark Side of the Sun'. It is a separate monster, with a different set of care and feeding instructions.

**Balance**

Prologue : Bubble_  
_

_ It has already been established that the universe is a very strange place. It is not a globe like the feeble minded homo sapien scientists believe, nor is it a helix as other, more advanced, races have speculated. It has no definite geometric shape, at least not in any sense that an inhabitant of the third dimension might think._

It is porous and pliant in places, both leaking and absorbing like a sponge. In others the fabric of the space-time is so sturdy that only an immeasurable surge of energy can manipulate its foundations. These things happen from time to time, creating bubbles of existence that block the route into relative normality.

One such occurrence went unnoticed, for at the moment of its creation the bubble had no observers.

It had flown through space for countless millenia at a speed that would not normally invite disaster, yet it was fated to eventually fall. Gravity, a force that is a contradiction even unto itself, pulled it into an unstable orbit around a small, pale star. It managed to avoid contact with the system of planets circling that particular sun for no short amount of time, though each pass it made brought it closer and closer towards its final destination.

The planet was remarkable only in the fact that organic life had managed to sink its claws into the surface, refusing to be torn from the globe even after the cosmos' countless attempts to extinguish it. The cube, older perhaps than the planet itself, was knocked from its errant trajectory as it past through a ring of debris midway through the solar system. It crashed through the atmosphere of the planet and into the rocks of the western hemisphere. The heat from its entry bore a hole into the ground some thirty meters down, the only evident physical damage. No impact crater, for the composition of the object was not one that would readily break apart.

However, in the object's nature itself lay an intrinsic problem.

The near limitless energy it contained and the angle of its impact with this life-filled world was enough to shake the walls of the universe. In reaction, the energy of the universe itself pushed back, creating a bubble to shield itself from the full damage of the event. Small at first, but quickly growing larger and larger on fuel not of that region of space, it soon consumed not only the entire solar system but also a few nearby stars as well.

It was a pocket, a minor branch in universal history that mimicked the original in much the way a xerox copy mimics that first sheet of paper. But like most xeroxes, there were imperfections, blotches of ink from an overused cartridge, and because of this, time within the bubble did not progress as it did upon the original world.

The major things stayed the same, but there were enough differences to knock the course of human history off-balance. Such changes in the backdrop of humanity's long list of faults, flaws, and grievous mistakes, did alter their fate for the worst.

These imperfections caused an imbalance of stability along the walls of the pocket universe itself. This allowed travel from real space at the border, which was invisible unless one was actually looking for it. As it were, the bubble now blocked the way to the original planet and those that were chasing after the cube, whether in maliciousness or in hope for the future, fell victim to this xerox history. 


	2. Chapter One : Silent Earth

**Disclaimer :** I own nothing, save for the one singular main OC character that shall appear in this story.

**Balance**

Chapter One : Silent Earth

In the dark gray light of pre-dawn, a singular human girl climbed forth from the smashed in window of an old roadside motel. She paused to stretch, reaching first with both arms above her head then doubling over to tap her toes, both legs perfectly straight. The bulk of the ratty old book-bag strapped to her back hardly caused her any difficulty, though it seemed to sag low with the weight of its contents.

She did not glance about at the parking lot with its rusted vehicles or the motel sign that had collapsed over them some years previous. Any hazards such as broken shards of glass had been swept away by the wind, so there was nothing to worry about as she crossed the cracked and sun-bleached pavement. Across the street lay the remains of of a mini mart, half caved in where a telephone pole had fallen against the roof.

Stepping through the broken doors into the sand dusted interior, she hesitated, turning her gaze about the place. It was a mess, for at some point in time a wild animal, most likely a coyote, had torn the place apart in search of food. Sighing, she stepped deeper into the building, skirting around a toppled shelf down an aisle that would have normally housed various selections of canned food. Most of the once fully stocked shelf was gone, there were only few cans of mixed fruit and one can of baked beans left to choose from.

Not giving voice to her disappointment or giving any other sign of such an emotion, she pulled her backpack off and unzipped it. Carefully, she picked up each can individually and placed it amongst the collection of spare clothes and first aid kits contained within. A glance to her left alerted her to the presence of a few unbroken bottles of water in the corner of the only still upright cooler.

She trudged over, dragging the book-bag on the floor behind her. Disturbed dust flew up, tickling her nose as she reached for the door.

Pausing, she tried and failed to stifle a sneeze.

Face contorting into an expression somewhere between annoyance and pouty, she yanked open the door to the cooler. Her nose crinkled at the smell of long rotten dairy products that had been fermenting for who knew how long. She fought back the urge to empty the non-existent contents of her stomach, grabbing quickly for the water bottles so that she could shut the door.

Leaning down, she shoved them in her backpack, rearranging items so that everything would fit. Once done, she hoisted the bag back over her shoulder, taking a moment to adjust the straps so that it sat more comfortably on her back. Shuffling back towards the door, the thin soles of her shoes caught on a piece of yellowed newspaper, dragging a strip of it away with her.

Blowing a puff of air out of her mouth with sudden abruptness, she leaned down to remove the annoyance from her foot. It tore, leaving a small unnoticed piece still adhered to the bottom of her right shoe. The rest floated away, ignorantly proclaiming a date some twenty years in the past.

Outside on the street, kicking up dirt with every step, she pulled a torn and weathered map from within the recess of her shirt. Unfolding it, she squinted at the marks, mouth moving silently as she fought with her brain over the letters and the lines. Her next destination was larger than this poor excuse for a pit stop, but it was also much farther along than she had originally anticipated.

She didn't need to look around to know that there was no transportation other than her own two legs; the only vehicles in sight were those slowly falling apart in the motel parking lot and they were far from useable. The only other option, to turn back and return to the town before, was not something to be considered. She'd already exhausted all food options within that region and it was uncomfortably close to the cracked asphalt of the freeway.

The only choice was to go forward in the hope that clouds would grace the sky and prevent the sun from burning as bright as it had in the days before.

She folded up the map and stuck it back inside her shirt before picking up her pace. Ignoring the tinge of pink on the horizon, she fished a folded up hat from within one of the pockets of her shorts. She pulled on, not even bothering to glance back at what had been her home for the past three days. She'd get as far as she could before noon, then find some shadowed crevasse in the rocks to wait for the light to fade.

It had worked for her travels before and it would work again barring any instances involving rattlesnakes.

* * *

Of all the things that Bumblebee had pictured the planet known as Earth to be, empty had not been one of them. His past encounter with the strange ship designated as Ghost One had left him with the impression of a society slowly rising in technological prowess. A planet filled with life both intelligent and reckless enough to reverse engineer Cybertronian components. He had imagined cityscapes with buildings tall enough to scrape the sky, similar maybe, to the towering structures of his own home world. He'd pictured more machines, not intelligent sentient like his own species, but at the very least devices and tools to be used like the human's ship. But most of all, he'd expected that this world would be alive, with humans, whatever they actually looked like, filling every corner.

Instead he had found a world so void of life that at first he'd thought that maybe he'd followed the wrong coordinates.

There were buildings, but they were run down, scarred, broken, crumbling and falling apart. Cracks and potholes marred roads paved with crushed rock and tar. Strange vehicles stood empty along the sides of the streets, rusting in the sun. There were no machines other than those rubber wheeled contraptions with their time shattered combustion engines.

Or at least, none that he could see.

Debris, plastics of varying consistencies and decaying sheets of flattened cellulose lay scattered within so many craters that littered the landscape. All evidence of the high explosives that had caused them washed away by so many cycles of rain. And everywhere he looked there was no sign of any biological life of the kind he'd detected aboard Ghost One. No humans, just a few strange skinny quadrupeds that ran in fright when he approached and feathered things that flew off with incoherent screeches when he trained his optics on them.

There were insects, similar to kinds he'd encountered on other worlds and thankfully much smaller, though their numbers more than made up for their lack of size. They crawled and buzzed over everything, and he could guess that, perhaps, with no humans about the multi-legged creatures had no reason to fear getting stepped on.

Something horrible had happened on this planet, the craters and crumbling structures around him a testament to a violence he'd hoped to avoid for the time being. Initially, upon exploring the emptiness that was earth, he had forgone seeking a disguise. But the impact sites, old though they appeared to be, were of a size suggesting a considerable yield. Their size and consistencies matched those created by plasma cannons, albeit crude and highly inefficient ones. The source of their generation was not readily evident, though he suspected that if the humans had managed to build a ship from mere outward study of his kind, it was highly probable that they would have developed something even more dangerous.

Whoever controlled such devices would be of a significant threat should a fight break out. It was this thought that spurred him to scan one of the more intact terrestrial vehicles rather than to retain his original shape. His assumption was that if he ever did come across a human, they would be less likely to fire upon something of their own ilk. It had taken him a while to find something in suitable enough shape to travel, by then he had scanned through every building in the city.

All were devoid of humans, imagined forms or real.

He did, however, find a primitive graphic display depicting what they should look like. It had become detached from its mount, leaning sideways against a relatively intact building. Because of the way it had fallen, the pictures on the side that would have normally been displayed hadn't faded from exposure to sunlight.

There were three of them imprinted upon the fabric the board was made of, sitting on what appeared to be sand bordering a large expanse of water. It was easiest to see that the smallest was a youngling, and despite the differences between his own physiology and that of the pictured child, Bumblebee could tell that it was laughing. Frozen in a happy moment, the young human's face was split into what could only be grin as an unmoving wave of water splashed at its legs. The other humans in the picture, he guessed, were its progenitors. Although they too appeared to be smiling, he could not help but think that their expressions were being faked for the sake of the display.

Only the young one's face seemed to be genuine.

He filed the whole display away for future reference, so that he would be able to recognize a human if he saw one.

It was shortly after discovering the pictures that he found the small collection of still working vehicles left within the city. They were inside a warehouse type building, preserved from most of the effects of the planet's weather. He selected one of a suitable size, coated in faded paint of a yellowish hue with two black stripes. It was mere coincidence that the vehicle happened to be the least rusted of the bunch.

Once his local camouflage was in place, he sped out of the city along on of the few streets he'd detected leading away from the empty collection of buildings. There had to be other cities to look through and the roads would surely lead him there.

It did, only once, cross his mind that there was a connection between the lack of life on this world and the name of the lost human ship.

* * *

The girl woke slowly, blinking awkwardly at the advancement of the light upon her pupils, confusion clouding her mind. She detected the cushiness of certain fabrics pressing against her, a sense that was at odds with aching joints and unwashed denim. Her gaze focused on unfamiliar surroundings that continued to befuddle until realization dawned that this was a different motel.

Affording herself a groan, she dropped her head back into the pillows, recalling how she'd hastily shoved them into the lobby corner the day before, creating a makeshift bed. The light refused to cease its assault and so she pushed herself upwards into a sitting position only to yelp at the pain of her burnt skin.

She had spent nearly all of the past four days walking through the heat and the glare of the desert sun. No clouds had rolled over the sky to block even a fraction of the light from reaching out with burning, invisible hands. Luck in the form of another abandoned gas station had graced her on the third day, just after her water had run out. She'd found a hoard of unopened bottles of water within the rundown freezers, enough to resupply and then some.

And then, as she'd continued on into the fourth day with too little sleep and only one more can of food, she'd come to the outskirts of her destination. Too exhausted to explore, she'd merely stumbled into the first available space with just enough time to create a suitable sleeping area before the sand man came to pay his due. Now, however, she saw that the pillows she'd so hastily grabbed had been subjected to time and mold, two things that did not make for an agreeable bed.

Gingerly, she got to her feet, soles still sore from the constant movement of the past few days. Scanning the foyer, she found her backpack lying discarded a few meters away, looking forlorn and even more ragged against the torn and musty carpet. Crossing the floor slowly so as not to aggravate her already irritated skin, she sat back down next to the bag. Opening it, she dug through it carefully, wincing every time her flesh made contact with the rough fabric of the bag itself or even the spare clothes she kept inside.

Near the bottom she found what she was looking for, a bottle of foul smelling lotion which, despite its odor, would soothe the burns for a while. It was nearly empty, but there was enough for a good coat. Scrunching her nose at the smell of it, she smeared it up and down her arms, sighing as the cool substance soaked into her red burnt skin. Enough was left over for her face as well, so she rubbed some onto her cheeks, on the bridge of her nose and across her forehead.

Tossing the now useless container away, she cautiously stood back up to take in the more specific details of the lobby. Peeling paper once of a pleasant mauve color clung to the walls in some places, whilst the floor held both sand and mold in some places. There were a few couches in an area that may have once been a lounge, but moths and other insects appeared to have discovered alternate uses for such furniture.

Outside the dust covered windows she could see yet another parking lot filled with dead and dying cars. A shattered no vacancy sign blocked part of the entrance, and the building opposite, which may have housed rooms two hundred and one through two hundred and fifty, had collapsed entirely.

She turned to retrieve her bag, but a plaque on the wall to her right drew the girl's attention. She stared for a moment, then shuffled over for a better look, possibly affected by the gleam of the light shining off its surface despite the dust. She reached up and wiped it clear, tilting her head to the side as her fingers traced over the etchings.

"Tran - kill - ah - tee," she read out loud, slowly and with a voice that sounded horrible scratched as each syllable was pronounced.

The girl coughed and turned away, possibly affected by the grime or maybe from disuse of her own voice. Clearing her throat, she scuttled back to her bag, reaching down to zip it shut. Picking it up, she placed it over her shoulders with exaggerated caution. The fabric of the straps rubbing against her shoulders caused her to give a painful hiss, but she managed to ignore the burning sensation for now. It would fade eventually into an even darker shade of tan than her skin already was.

Hunger, on the other hand, would not dissipate so easily.

She stepped from the shadows of the lobby and glanced off at the buildings scattered in the distance. A nervous flutter ran through her system, creating a buzzing sensation in her gut. A new town offered new possibilities of exploration, but also a healthy amount of danger; danger of all shapes and sizes. Taking a deep breath, she nodded slightly as if to reassure herself, then trudged onward.

"Tran - kill - ah - tee." 


	3. Chapter Two : Survivalism

**Disclaimer :** Don't own, just borrowing.

Thankyou Mr. Kemp, I'm glad you find the story interesting. Hopefully others will too, else I might get writer's block.

**The Balance**

Chapter Two : Survivalism

There were computers.

Bumblebee's initial excitement upon detected them faded quickly once he realized just how primitive and corroded the files within the devices actually were. And how little of it there was even without the decay. The amount stored was so insignificant that he would have overlooked it completely if not for the oddity of the mere presence of computational circuits amidst the hollow wastes of this world.

All were text files with a binary base code, easily decipherable and though the data was heavily corrupted, he could still understand enough of it to get a basic grasp of the original user's language. Without audio files, however, there was no way for him to know what the words would sound like, and no way to communicate with any humans should he come across them. Though at least he'd be able to understand what they might say, though this was very small comfort in wake of learning what the files themselves were really about.

They contained an event log of sorts, spanning the course of nine years, which he calculated to mean the time it took for the planet to complete a revolution around its star. These years spanned from what was written as number nineteen eighty-nine to number nineteen ninety-eight, which by Bumblebee's own calculations meant that the writer had ceased keeping the journal barely an eighth of a vorn ago.

According to the writer, a faction of humans known as Russia, which had apparently controlled a major portion of the largest landmass in the eastern hemisphere, had attacked another faction known as the United States of America. It was in apparent retaliation for things that had happened a long time before the journal was even written, the events and reasons spurring it never specified. This first record was followed by a description of the strange weapons and machines that the humans of Russia were using, which sent a shiver through Bumblebee's circuits. Devices of destruction, engineered from studying the terror that was Megatron and used to kill others of their own kind. The Decepticon leader had inadvertently brought war to another species, and may have quite possibly killed them.

The log continued with an account of the United States' counter-attack using missiles armed with nuclear explosives aimed at key targets in the eastern landmass. Every single one struck its mark, but the writer suggested that the very nature of the targets themselves had led to the crippling of every other major power in the immediate area. The death toll had numbered in the millions, and that was just a lower estimate that did not include the effects of radioactive fallout. This section was almost as disturbing to Bumblebee as picturing the source of the Russian's weapons, though it reaffirmed his choice of landing in the western hemisphere. He remembered on his approach detecting the high levels of radiation in what he now knew to be Russia. These humans, he decided, were more violent a race than Ghost One had led him to believe.

The worst, apparently, had yet to come.

Crippled and unable to launch their own nuclear arsenal, Russia turned to another neighboring faction so as to make one last strike against their mutual enemies. China had apparently been working on a plan to bring down the United States for a very long time, and so near completion they merely stepped up production in order to keep their deal with the Russians. It was not specified in the log what the deal itself was, but the effects of China's attack had spelled disaster for the human species. They had developed a disease with effects that rendered a fairly painful death by what Bumblebee could see from the description. He was no expert in such matters, but the mentionings of damage to neural pathways and skeletal structures seemed similar enough to his own internals to make him shudder once more.

The contagion had spread far faster than China had anticipated and soon it couldn't be controlled by the pre-made vaccines that the humans of the faction had created for themselves. It soon encompassed the entire globe, death sweeping over the population. The species had doomed itself through so many vengeful actions in so little time.

It was no wonder he couldn't find any humans here.

They were all dead.

* * *

There was a lake.

When she found it the girl cried out with glee and dumped her bag on the shore to run straight in, clothes and all. The water was warm but clear, and a welcome respite from the heat of the day. It felt good against the burnt skin of her arms and for a while she just splashed around, enjoying the moment. Eventually her boots became a little too heavy to continue floating, so she sloshed back up on shore and undid the laces, tossing them aside.

Dripping, she hopped over to her backpack and undid the zipper, pulling out a ragged and torn towel from the bottom. Setting it aside on the grass for a moment, she pulled out another set of clothes dry and relatively clean. She put them aside as well, then stripped off her currently soaked attire, flinging it back towards the lake to await further cleansing. Picking up the towel, she wrapped it around herself and picked up a small thing of soap from one of the bag's side pockets. Shuffling back towards the water's edge, she proceeded to scrub the already wet garments. She rinsed them several times before wringing them out and carrying them over hang off a nearby tree.

Once this was done she changed into her dry pair of clothes and settled down beneath the shade of the tree for a nap, backpack for a pillow. It took a while before she managed to doze off, shifting every so often because the grass felt uncomfortably prickly against her arms. Finally she settled into a position that was relatively comfy, falling into a light slumber only to be abruptly woken by a strange sound.

At first she dismissed it as being a figment of her imagination, that it had come from her dreams and that it couldn't possibly be real. But then she heard it again off in the distance, sharply sitting up, heart suddenly pounding in her chest as she struggled to make sure she had identified the noise correctly. And then she was on her feet, grabbing her still damp clothes and towel, shoving them in her backpack before forcing her boots back on. Hurriedly slapping the buckles shut, she half hopped her way around the edge of the lake. However, with footwear firmly in place a few moments later, she took off, soles scrabbling for purchase as she ran away from the sound.

It was a car engine.

Cars meant other people.

Other people meant trouble.

And trouble, in her experience, was painful.

* * *

The sound of an engine other than his own greeted Bumblebee's receptors, though it was faint and distorted by the many criss-crossing avenues that wound around this small speck of a town. He advanced on it cautiously, for with all evidence pointing at the humans having killed themselves there was every chance that this new arrival was a Decepticon. As he drew closer to the noise, however, his sensors picked up the presence of biological life forms within the vehicle in question. This sent a thrill through his circuits, the thought that there still were humans, humans who'd survived their own self-made disaster.

He sped up, rounding one corner faster than he'd intended, causing his tires to emit a shrieking sound against the road. He didn't stop to contemplate the idea that the sound might have drawn undue attention, for at that moment something ran across the road ahead of him. It was small, but bipedal, and though the brief glimpse he'd been given had barely lasted a second's worth of time, internal comparisons to the images he'd found in the first city confirmed that it was human.

No sooner had he seen it did the other engine roar into sight. It was a vehicle larger than his own disguise, rusting like every other wheeled contraption he'd encounter so far but unlike the others, it wasn't empty. There were humans controlling it, steering it at a reckless speed through the streets. At least his scanners showed them to be similar to the one that had just run past. His optics, on the other hand, could not be completely certain on that point.

They were wearing some sort of thick outer covering over their entire bodies that disguised and distorted their features. Memory recall brought up a term from the logs he'd downloaded from the dying computers: hazmat suits. Though they hadn't been described in the detail he was seeing now, he was more than certain that this was the correct label for the armor that adorned these humans. Filters were fitted into the part that masked their face, set under thick transparent plastic for their own optic systems to function properly.

Their vehicle pulled to the side of the road where the first human had run, and several of the suited ones dropped out. They ignored Bumblebee, having more than likely not detected his earlier motions. He could only speculate that their normal hearing range was somehow affected by their protective garments. The few who left the larger vehicle vanished into the gap between the two buildings, gesturing and, to Bumblebee's surprise, speaking to each other through some primitive comm. system.

At first it took a moment to decipher their words compared to the information he'd found in the journals, but eventually the meaning became clear when a circuit shattering shriek filled the air. The suited humans had pulled back into sight range, exiting the alley and dragging a squirming form after them. Another scream followed, with the form twisting and kicking at its captors, trying desperately to get away. For every struggling attempt to escape, it was struck, each blow harder than the last, pulling, pushing, until finally they'd reached a point where Bumblebee could fully see what it was they were fighting with.

It was human.

Smaller and skinnier than themselves.

A youngling.


End file.
